2023 Nissan Ariya can no longer be reserved
The page dedicated to the 2023 Ariya crossover at Nissan’s U.S. website now reads, “Reservations closed.” You can add the battery-electric crossover to the ever-expanding list of oversubscribed and out-of-stock goods. Nissan has already started deliveries to customers in the home market of Japan, but issues at Nissan’s Intelligent Factory, which builds the Ariya, have hampered the production ramp-up. Automotive News reports that automaker COO Ashwani Gupta says demand has been stout in the U.S., Europe and Japan. So instead of turning off customers with an unsavory wait time, or worse, not delivering vehicles during the requested model year, the company decided to close the doors to the Ariya for now.
On a side note, and speaking of wait times, Nissan launched the Leaf at the end of 2010, one month after the Tesla Model S. The year before, in 2009, then-CEO Carlos Ghosn said he believed EVs could represent 10% of global market share in 10 years, which would have been about 6 million units at the time. He was a little off the mark, but not nearly as far off as people thought in 2009. A report from the International Energy Agency earlier this year said EVs nabbed 8.75% of global market share in 2021, about 6.6 million units. A shame it’s taken Nissan 12 years to throw its second EV at the revolution the company predicted and helped foster.
Back to the Ariya, AN said Nissan wouldn’t provide a production figure for the U.S., but an unnamed dealer source said there were “about 6,000” units made available for dealers to reserve. If true, that’s compared to the 6,800 pre-orders Nissan says it took in Japan, and shows either just how cautious Nissan is being or just how difficult things are on the production side, perhaps both. Since Nissan opened reservations here in November, that would mean it’s taken about seven months to soak up the supply, a lengthy spell considering how many other OEM EV model-year runs have been snapped up more quickly.
Deliveries of the four trims available at launch should commence here later this year. The limited lineup begins with the entry-level front-wheel-drive Venture+ trim that starts at $47,950, moving up through the front-wheel drive Evolve+, then the Premier, topping out with the $60,125 Platinum+ e-4ORCE with all-wheel drive.
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